If you have not seen this, a good report on how yet one more area of greed is hurting seniors with dementia and Alzheimer's being placed in Assisted Living Care facilities when nursing homes are more appropriate. The care or lack of I should say here is scary and there’s that awful ringing of money bells once again with the same issues that doctors have at hospitals, “fill up the beds” and admit patients, and that does happen at hospitals and you won’t hear doctors talk about it either as they would be kicked out of being on staff if they did.

Emeritus is sold on the stock exchange of course and there comes the pressure to make money for share holders. I think some businesses are not meant to be for profit and this is one of them. Not too long ago I wrote about a United Healthcare subsidiary which is “hospice for profit”. I used a hospice service for my mother who passed away recently and I can say that I am so glad I used a non profit as the United subsidiary would probably have pounded me with stats and studies, etc. when that was not the time for it, as that’s how they operate, money and shareholders are number one. Read more here about how big insurers stay under the radar too so you don’t even know sometimes if you are doing business with a subsidiary of a huge conglomerate. According to this report, nothing is changing. BD

Dark Arts of Mathemical Deception

Professor Charlie Siefe of NYU, a mathematician debunks clinical trials, and few other items to where data is spun and fools you, every day example, hear about the perfect butt algorithm and more. These are probably some things you have never thought about but again after listening to what he has to say, it’s time to think about being skeptical. Here’s a radio show that also talks about the same topics.

This video digs in a bit further with how fictitious business models are used by banks and companies do this too. The models are so complex that CEOs don’t even understand them. “Quants, The Alchemists of Wall Street will take you through how “math models” work at banks and financial institutions in a way that even the layman can understand. More videos like over at theAlgo Duping/Killer Algorithm Page. Bank of America will also tell you“IT’ is a business” how they make money.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This is a lecture where Kathy O’Neill, a former Quant who worked for a Hedge Fund (Weapons of Math Destruction) on Wall Street will tell you what is done with your retirement money and more. The banks and companies use technology to take advantage because they can. “Of course we are going to take advantage because our tools are our brains…if they could figure out a way to take advantage of pension funds they would, a good interview with explaining smart money and dumb money.

Algorithms Shape The World

This is a very good presentation done a TED Conference and really was the one that got everyone started thinking about algorithms and today it’s talked about a lot. As he says “if you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for humans”. What is a black box? Nobody has any control over the flash crash. We have moved forward a bit but still we are writing the unreadable and lost the sense of some of what is happening. Nice plug for Nanex here with research.